04.16.08

I’m feeling old tonight. I read (via John Gruber) that Stan Flack, co-founder of MacCentral (and later MacMinute), had died.

As I read the posts from his former co-workers and friends in the Mac community, I began to wonder…had it really been nearly 15 years since I’d started following the Mac web? I remember when MacCentral switched from publishing every-other-day to daily, I remember how MacCentral would always commemorate Remembrance Day (Stan was Canadian; it’s Armistice Day or Veterans Day to the rest of us), and I remember the tiny little icons that MacCentral used in the early days to help differentiate the story type.

In fact, it’s those little icons (part of a bygone era on the web, and perhaps happily so) that are the reason I’m writing this at all. Shortly after a redesign in which they disappeared, I sent a little note to MacCentral’s feedback address politely lamenting their demise. Much to my surprise, I later received a response from none other than Stan Flack, Publisher of MacCentral, himself. The email is lost to the depths of time, but I recall him thanking me for the feedback, explaining why the icons went away, adding that he missed them a bit, too, and he’d look to see if there were other ways to use them (or something to that effect). The top guy responding to inconsequential feedback himself. I can’t claim to have known him, but from reading what others have written, that was the kind of person Stan Flack was.

As for those little icons, maybe it’s just my mind, but I’ve always thought that MacCentral’s post-redesign site logo and, later, its site icon () were reminiscent of those little globe-like icons that made reading only the stories I was interested in so easy. Those days seem so long ago and far away now….

And so, feeling older and with a sadness over the untimely passing of one the Mac web’s pioneers and enduring figures, I offer my happy memories of one of the greatest Mac news sites during the golden age of the Mac web, and of the man behind it, and I offer my condolences to the family and friends of Stan Flack.